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Sunday, 11 May 2014

The Boy from Titchmarsh and the Queen's Tiara by Laurie Graham

I was delighted to see the Queen’s choice of tiara when she
entertained President Michael D. Higgins at Windsor Castle last month. Not that
I’m particularly a connoisseur of tiaras, but I happened to know a bit about
the Vladimir from researching my just-completed novel, The Grand Duchess of
Nowhere.

The Vladimir tiara can be worn one of two ways, either with
its original pendant pearls or, alternatively, with emeralds. Her Majesty chose the emerald version, in
honour of her Irish guest. I hope he noticed.

How the Vladimir came into the possession of the Queen is
quite a saga. It was originally the property of Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna,
the wife of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich. Grand Duke Vladimir was an uncle of Tsar Nicholas II. The Grand Duchess was known
familiarly as Miechen, and she was an Olympic-standard collector of gems,
dropping into Faberge and Cartier as you and I might swing by the supermarket.
She also had a very generous husband who understood that after giving birth the
thing a woman most longs for is a parure of diamonds or sapphires.Miechen had three sons and one daughter, all intended to be
the eventual recipients of her jewel collection, but history took a different
turn. By early 1917 Miechen, along with many other Romanovs, had headed south
to Crimea, away from what they supposed were temporary political disturbances in St
Petersburg and Moscow. That Miechen left behind most of her jewels in the
Vladimir Palace is evidence enough that she believed she’d be going back.

As the revolution gathered pace Miechen began to accept that
she was facing exile and with it the pressing need for ready money. She needed her
jewels, but how to retrieve them from a city now under the control of the
Petrograd Soviet? Enter stage left Bertie Stopford, an Englishman who preferred
to speak French, a vicar's son from Titchmarsh in Northamptonshire, neither soldier nor diplomat but somehow free to move around
wartime Russia and be an entertaining friend to women like Grand Duchess
Miechen.

A plan was quietly hatched. Stopford and Miechen’s son
Boris, dressed as boiler repair men, entered the Vladimir Palace by the
tradesman’s entrance, made their way to Miechen’s boudoir and sprang her
jewels, including the pearl drop Vladimir tiara, from her safe. The precious items were
taken out of the palace in tool bags. How they were spirited out of Russia is
still unclear, perhaps by diplomatic courier, courtesy of the British Embassy,
perhaps concealed in someone’s clothing. A tiara would certainly have been difficult to
secrete in one’s bloomers.

However it was done, Miechen’s jewels made it out of
revolutionary Russia. Their value though was greatly diminished in a market
flooded with gems belonging to exiled Romanovs. Cheaper pearls were becoming available too, from Japan. Fortunately for Miechen she
didn’t live long enough to feel the pinch of their devalued worth, but after
her death her children had to get whatever they could for them in order to pay off
her debts. They were disposed of discreetly. Wealthy potential buyers were
approached. Psst. Want to buy a diamond and pearl tiara, one careful previous
owner?

The Vladimir was acquired by Queen Mary, the wife of King
George V, and it was her idea to use some emeralds she had lying around and have
them mounted as alternatives to the pendant pearls. 'To ring the changes', as the
fashion editors say. When Queen Mary died her granddaughter, our present Queen,
inherited the Vladimir tiara, with its two sets of pendants, and it was the
emeralds that were aired at Windsor in April.

As for Bertie Stopford, I don’t know if he was rewarded for
his derring-do. Perhaps the gratitude of a Romanov Grand Duchess was all he ever
wanted. He lived out the rest of his life, mainly in Paris, with no visible
means of support except lots of dinner invitations and the occasional
commission from buying and selling antiques. He was a gadfly and name-dropper
par excellence, but when he died in 1939 his estate only ran to the cost of a
30 year lease on a plot in the Bagneux Cemetery. In 1970 the man who rescued
the Vladimir tiara ended up in a communal grave. His world and his so-called friends had faded away. But his true wealth, of course, were his memories, as recorded in his Russian Diary of an Englishman, Petrograd 1915-17.

I like that he didn't have much on death, but he lived when he was alive! Some folk don't want money but a good life and good connections would have fulfilled his or he would have called in his connections to get more. Sounds quite an interesting guy, thank you I shall go hunt more about him.

Great to learn the history of this tiara, Laurie, as I became very taken with it in the Silver Jubilee year (when I was seven) - I think it featured on a souvenir I had - and, ever since, have always noticed particularly when the Queen is wearing it. I never knew it had such an interesting story behind it!

Ah the glorious Bertie Stopford, a favourite of mine. something of an enigma but clearly well connected/active on the London-Paris gay scene. He was prosecuted and jailed for cottaging after he returned to the UK. Hence the Oscar Wilde like flight to Paris and his death in obscurit there.

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